Selling double glazing.

Scraping plates in a fish and chip cafe in Whitby.

I’ve never had a terrible job. I’ve been a cook, waitress, bookseller, teacher, freelance writer. I know what the bad jobs are and I haven’t done them.

A kitchen porter at some big telecom office in Wimbledon. I was also a kitchen porter at L’Escargot and, while I was there, a model for Gilbert and George. It was a quick £15 and they were terribly nice.

I would like to come out at 16 or 17, and not 21.

That I still don’t understand life. When I was young, I thought at some point I would find somebody who does. I am 45, and there is a good chance that I’ll never meet somebody like that.

On a personal level, the friend who is a single mum raising two kids by herself during this Covid era. She is a real hero. If a historical personality, I choose Mikhail Gorbachev, who probably saved the world from world war three.

Now. I’ve learned to adjust my expectations to reality better than when I was 20 or 10.

When my dog died a couple of years ago. We were in Greece on vacation and a friend was watching her at home, and she was bitten by a snake. We rushed home, but we were too late by a few hours.

I was almost run over by a bus when I was 13. And in 1991, in the Gulf war, an Iraqi missile hit close to my house.